Chef Chang's House to close and become Sichuan Gourmet

According to Universal Hub via the Boston Restaurant Talk blog, Chef Chang's House, the unassuming Chinese restaurant about 25 feet from the Brookline/Boston line (and right next to the mid-60s/early 70s white Beacon Street sign) will close and become Sichuan Gourmet.  Two branches of Sichuan House are already in Billerica and Framingham.

I discovered the restaurant in 1992, while coming home for weekends at UMass Dartmouth.  Somehow I was hungry and I wanted something quick, and right at the portal of the "C" line trolley was this restaurant.  It's very low-key, comfortable, and out-of-the-way.  Sweet and sour chicken for lunch back then was $4.25...not a bad deal for a poor college student!

The lunch specials came with soup (never got the soup) and an appetizer (either wontons or an egg roll).  The duck sauce served with the egg rolls had a very slight hint of strawberries, although I can't confirm this.  And each diner got a free pot of hot tea plus refills of ice water.

The sweet and sour chicken at Chef Chang's House is the yardstick to compare restaurant sweet and sour chicken made at Chinese restaurants.  Usually, the other versions are a day-glo mess of chicken fingers, a heavily-sugary (and often piping hot because of the sugar) sauce, and maybe a cherry or a pineapple here or there (Liane's in Hyde Park used to have cherries and pineapple, but don't anymore).  Chef Chang's sauce is exactly the right balance of sweet and sour, and they toss in pickles, carrots, green peppers and onions.  And, at the very end of the meal, I save the cherry for last, as that represents the end of a good meal.

In 2010, the lunch special has increased to $6.95, still very reasonable for the college student, and for an extra dollar I get the healthier and stickier brown rice.  However, It's sad that a good Chinese restaurant like this must close.  King's House in Hyde Park did the same and they were open for over 32 years until he closed in 2007.  Kenny King did a great business competing against Liane's...his food was much more expensive but well worth it.  He closed because people liked Liane's better and they usually deal in high volume (the luncheon/dinner specials are enough to feed two or have over two meals!)  Talk and Wok (where the Mug and Muffin used to be eons ago) isn't as good and imparts that thin, cheesy Chinese restaurant patina.  Maybe Sichuan Gourmet will prove to be as good, but I will certainly miss Chef Chang's House.

(Aside: the best homemade sweet and sour chicken I had was at an old high school friend's house.  Maybe the new owners of Sichuan Gourmet could get lessons from her?)

PLZ SEE ME RE: LAST EXAM - BAD GRADE, NOT PAYING ATTN :-(

Babson college professor Kara Miller throws down the gauntlet to American college students who want to flirt and text and daydream.

And she is 100% correct that foreign students work much harder than us and do much better, even with a language gap.  That's because they value higher education and want to succeed through it, while American students see their four years as a time to party and socialize (among other things), and then once they get their first job, they are woefully unprepared.

If you want to know the bane of managers and supervisors, it's escorting the underperforming employee to the Human Resources department to tell them their services are no longer required.  In college, it's called the academic dismissal.

Full disclosure and addendum: While I was in college, I garnered a 3.2 grade point average.  That's a high B, almost near B+ average.  There were times where I should have been more proactive in getting my work done, but when I left graduate school (and didn't return), I had two C's; the minimum grade is a B.  I would have been put on academic probation the next semester.  If I had gotten another C, I would have been academically dismissed.  If you're a A or B student who works hard and grabs the concepts well, then professors notice it.  When you're a C or D student who doesn't try (or tries too hard in the drinking and hooking up department) then the professors know it isn't their subject matter that's the problem - it's you.

The altar of Gaia is fraught with Tofu-pup wrappers and crumpled pictures of Marx and Lenin in the nude

Note to the health Puritans and malignant gentry who are trying to hide their mega-control freak designs through Mother Earth - it's not nice to fool Mother Nature - in fact, pissing her off will give you something much more than you bargained for. 

If they weren't so obnoxious on your neo-Puritan crusade, and actually MINDED THEIR OWN GODDAMN BUSINESS, people wouldn't see them as the fussy eaters and spoiled children they really are.

Dumb criminal tip: never cash a stolen Lottery ticket

Two criminals in a Milton home invasion won the Stupid Criminal of the Century award when...

a. they attempted to cash in a stolen $5,000 Scary Money ticket at the Game Room at Ashburton Place

b. they both fell for the "oh, the system's down" stall while the Lottery agent (who knew the ticket was stolen) notified the State Police, and six officers came down and arrested both idiots

c. both A and B

Great job by the agent and the Staties.

When gentrification pisses off an entire neighborhood

Yuppie scum at its finest and most obnoxious, and a few questions:

1. How many of those condo units are affordable?

2. Are the loud booms from old Ironsides ruining people's whoopie making/yoga/debating sessions?

3. If you're here because it's an attractive area, why in blazes do you want to change it without a single shred of consideration for your neighbors, who were here much longer than you've been?

The Fort Hood attacks - who's right, and who's wrong?

I agree with what Hub Blog says here:

Here's a challenge to conservatives:  What specifically would [the mainstream media] do to prevent these types of attacks in the future?  It's put up or shut up time.

On the other hand, I have always been a staunch opponent of political correctness.  You can't simply excuse or wish away violence of any kind, including those attacks that result in death.  I don't agree it's a handmaiden to terror, but more like a way to put rose-colored glasses on unpleasant thoughts or situations.  And sometimes, the rose doesn't hide the horror well enough.

Whipping up emotions is easy.  Finding solutions that may not please the easily offended won't be.

The lump sum option in the Lottery's instant tickets...not a great idea

The Lottery, beginning with this summer's games, are now offering the choice between taking your winnings in installments or being paid out in a lump sum.

For example, if you win $1 million, you can take either 20 payments per year of $50,000 each, or one payment of $650,000.

First, the installments:

• With taxes, at 25% federal and 5% state, you will receive a check for $35,000 per year.  
• Over 20 years, you will receive a total of $700,000.  
• Depending on your tax bracket, you will likely stay within or go up perhaps one or two tax brackets.  For instance, if you're in the 15% tax bracket, you will stay there or increase to either the 25% or 28% tax bracket.

Now, with the lump-sum:

• With taxes, at 25% federal and 5% state, you will receive a one-time check for $455,000.  
• The $650,000 represents 13 annuity checks at $50,000 apiece, meaning you will lose 7 annuity checks at $350,000 for this convenience.  
• Compared with the annuity of 20 checks, the loss will be $245,000 over the period of 20 years ($700,000 - $455,000), or about $12,250 a year.
• Accepting the $650,000 will also put you into the 35% tax bracket for that year, meaning you will likely pay much more in taxes.  For instance, if you're in the 15% tax bracket, you will be in the 35% tax bracket that year - and all taxes are progressive.

The higher the prize, the more you stand to lose.  If you won $10 million, the amounts I mentioned above go up by a factor of 10 - meaning you lose $3.5 million if you take the lump sum and receiving a check for $4,550,000.  On the other hand, taking the 20 checks at $350,000 each means you get $7,000,000.

So your best bet?  Having a steady, albeit, lower winnings check for 20 years is much better than instant gratification and losing a lot more money. 

It's partially correct that the Lottery is a math tax on the stupid - because it takes a stupid person to utter that phrase.